Restaurant trends 2018

Monday, 15 January 2018 | Admin

Every year Big Hospitality releases the predicted trends in our industry for the upcoming year. 2018 is set for all change and a bit of dare as well, including the unthinkable vegan 'fast food', zero-proof gin (what?!) and even chatbots... read on!

1) Vegan 'fast food'

2017 was the year veganism went wild with even more and more establishments catering for vegans. However, over the coming 12 months expect to see restaurants letting their hair down a bit more and embrace... 'junk food'. The vegan food market is no longer so virtuous and so a more fun side to vegan cuisine - burgers, fried 'chicken', tacos, kebabs and pizzas exploded towards the end of last year and is set to continue this year with more premises being taken by vegan-based 'treat' restaurants.

2) EXPRESS FOrmats

Express formats are expected to take-off this year with more and more players opening smaller locations to take advantage of fast dining and delivery. In particular, Five Guys, a leading burger chain is opening two smaller premises in London which will have a bigger focus takeaway and delivery which their existing premises cannot. In addition, the smaller premises allows them to better locate around residential and commercial premises to make their product offering more available.

3) Chinese casual dining

Express formats are expected to take-off this year with more and more players opening smaller locations to take advantage of fast dining and delivery. In particular, Five Guys, a leading burger chain is opening two smaller premises in London which will have a bigger focus takeaway and delivery which their existing premises cannot. In addition, the smaller premises allows them to better locate around residential and commercial premises to make their product offering more available. It is anticipated that many other organisations will follow suit and create faster concepts this year.

4) micro-managed menus

Gone are the days when the waiter will ask "how was your meal", well... almost. Doing so, restauranteurs are not obtaining detailed information about their food to make necessary changes to encourage customer retention. Instead, they tend to find out on Tripadvisor after. Now, following the introduction of new software by food intelligence company Yumpingo, restaurants can now start to record dish-by-dish feedback at the end of every meal in just a few minutes. This will allow them to make any changes to the dish or even pull poorly rated ones. According to Big Hospitality, this is likely to mean that our menus at our favourite restaurants are likely to chop and change regularly.

5) ZERO-PROOF GIN

Whilst zero-proof gin already exists it is expected that more alcohol-free gin could become more available in restaurants in 2018. Whilst some may think "joy kill" there is a craze for these types of zero-proof drinks now due to their increasing health benefits. They are also inexpensive and much more affordable and are completely safe meaning you can still socialise with friends whilst driving to and from the venue. It is expected that 'zero-proof' will take off this year and continue to be a fixture in restaurants in the near future.

5) chatbots

You all have heard of Alexa and Google Home, now restaurants are taking advantage of these in-home devices by allowing customers to book tables with just their voice, for example, "Alexa, book a table for 6.00pm". Chatbots - software powered by AI, is being used more and more by restaurants, in particular, Pizza Express who currently used a booking bot and in addition, OpenTable has teamed up with the Amazon Echo to allow customers to book tables through their Echo devices. The world is changing!